Recently, the increase in concern over the beautification and health is confirmed. In the beatification, the whitening for suppressing the melanin pigment of the skin becomes a field of the trend for esthetic pursuit.
Conventionally, a camera system is used for the skin check which observes the skin surface on a monitor by enlarging it. The camera system for skin check is used in the dermatology, esthetic salon, beauty counseling, and the like. In the dermatology among them, the peculiarity of the skin surface is checked by observing an image of the crista cutis or sulcus cutis and then the counseling is performed.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 8-149352 discloses one camera for skin check. As disclosed in the Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 8-149352, a skin observing apparatus comprises: a case having the opening in front thereof; an optical system having an optical axis as the center of the opening arranged in the case; a solid-state image pick-up device which forms an optical image from the optical system on an image pick-up surface; and a plurality of light-emitting devices which are arranged to illuminate a subject out of the opening via the opening from the inside of the case, have the light illumination in the direction to the opening, are arranged like a ring with the optical axis as the center, and have blue luminescent color.
Further, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 7-322103 discloses another camera for skin check comprising: a lens which is arranged in a case, facing an image pick-up window opened in front of a case main body; an image pick-up device which picks-up an optical image incident via the lens; a circular-line fluorescent lamp which is arranged in the case and illuminates the image pick-up window; a reflecting unit which adjusts an advancing angle by the reflection upon guiding illuminating light from the circular-line fluorescent lamp; a transparent sliding pipe which is arranged coaxially to the image pick-up window in the case with the same diameter as that of the circumference of the image pick-up window and is freely movable in the axial direction; and a shading ring unit which is attached to a part of the transparent sliding pipe and realizes a first state and a second state. The first state permits the passage of the illuminating light from the circular-line fluorescent lamp via a transparent portion of the transparent sliding pipe in response to the movement of the transparent sliding pipe in the axial direction and which prohibits the passage of the illuminating light from the circular-line fluorescent lamp via the reflecting unit. Further, the second state permits the passage of the illuminating light from the circular-line fluorescent lamp via the reflecting unit and which prohibits the passage of the illuminating light from the fluorescent lamp of the image pick-up window via the transparent sliding pipe.
The dentistry needs to finish the color with the sense of comfort to the patient teeth in the case of creating a prosthetic tooth. Generally, data on the teeth color is obtained with the subjectivity by the direct comparison with the patient teeth color by using a shading guide.
In addition to the dermatology and the dentistry, the paint color of a vehicle and a building, the spectroscopic characteristics of food, and the dyeing of cloths require a technology for reproducing the color of the subject with accuracy for the purpose of using on the diagnosis, examination, confirmation, and determination.
As one conventional technology for reproducing the color with high accuracy, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-152269 discloses a color reproducing system in which multi-band image data is captured by picking-up an image of a subject under exterior lighting with many spectroscopic filters arranged on a rotary filter turret and further the color is reproduced by estimating the spectroscopic spectrum of the subject with high accuracy.
However, the color reproducing system disclosed in the Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-152269 is used to obtain spectrum data of the subject in a laboratory or the like, with the heavy weight in the fixing type, and needs another illuminating sensor which is used for the color reproduction with the exterior lighting. However, the above-mentioned fields of users, for whom the compact size, light weight, and handy property are necessary for the operation, do not satisfy with the conventional color reproducing system.
The dermatology conventionally uses a handy-type image processing system that does not obtain the multi-band data. Therefore, the handy-type image processing system does not satisfy the need for color reproduction with high precision.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a mobile image processing system for reproducing the color with the high precision and with the compact size and light weight.